Department of Linguistics, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics

Documentation and description of endangered languages

Department of Linguistics at SOAS is an internationally recognised centre for research and teaching on endangered languages across the world. Its postgraduate programmes in Language Documentation and Description aim to train new generations of linguists to document and support endangered languages. Staff and students are working on issues in documentation and description of threatened languages in Africa, Asia, Middle East, Siberia, Asia-Pacific and Latin America. From 2003 to 2015 the Department was home to the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project and has close links with Endangered Language Documentation Programme, which provides grants for language documentation and awards approximately £1 million a year in research grants to high-quality projects. The Endangered Languages Archive in the SOAS Library was hosted in the Linguistics Department from 2005 to 2015. It is an innovative, comprehensive digital archive which acts as a major international resource for scholars, communities and other interested people.